Sempra Buying Suntech Panels for 150-Megawatt Solar Project

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Sempra Generation, the project
development unit of Sempra Energy, will use solar panels from
Suntech Power Holdings Co. for a 150-megawatt plant in Arizona.

Suntech will supply 800,000 multicrystalline silicon panels
for the Mesquite Solar 1 project, the Wuxi, China-based company
said in a statement today.

Sempra has used thin-film panels from First Solar Inc. for
two large-scale projects in Nevada. Thin-film products generally
cost less and are less efficient than photovoltaic.

Mesquite is “a big project for Sempra to try with a new
technology provider,” Andrew Beebe, Suntech’s chief commercial
officer, said in an interview today. “This shows that
crystalline photovoltaics will be an extremely competitive
option for large-scale solar.”

Suntech will supply “an important amount of panels” from
its manufacturing plant in Goodyear, Arizona, Beebe said, “but
not a majority.”

Beebe said the panels produced at the Goodyear factory have
“a slightly higher cost” than the ones it makes in China, and
that Suntech passes this cost on to customers.

He said Suntech expects to sell this year 500 megawatts of
panels for projects in the U.S. and Canada.

The company said Jan. 31 it is increasing production at the
facility by adding a second shift, and it expects to reach by
midyear full annual production capacity of 50 megawatts.

The Mesquite project is about 30 miles (48.3 kilometers)
west of Suntech’s Goodyear factory. Zachry Holdings Inc., a San
Antonio-based engineering, procurement and construction
provider, will build it. Construction is set to start by
mid-2011 and is expected to be complete in 2013, according to
the statement.

First Solar

Alan Bernheimer, a spokesman for Tempe, Arizona-based First
Solar, would not say whether his company had bid on the Mesquite
project. “We have the biggest development pipeline of utility-scale photovoltaic projects in the U.S.,” Bernheimer said in an
e-mail today.

Sempra used First Solar panels for two plants in Nevada,
the 10-megawatt El Dorado project in Boulder City, which was
completed in December 2008, and the adjacent adjacent Copper
Mountain Solar, which has capacity of 48 megawatts and was
finished in December.

First Solar is the world’s largest supplier of thin-film
products and Suntech is the biggest photovoltaic panel maker.

San Francisco-based utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. will
buy electricity from the Mesquite project under a purchase
agreement signed in October.

Scott Crider, a Sempra Generation spokesman, would not give
a price for the Mesquite project. Photovoltaic “projects can
range from $3.5 to $5.5 million per megawatt, that’s the general
industry standard,” he said in an interview.